


The Chaos And The Calm

by andyouknowitis



Series: Certain Calculations [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:45:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3812716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a comic book/superhero lover and lifelong fan of all things Marvel to boot I was never not gonna love this show. I fell in love with these two within about 0.7 seconds of them appearing onscreen. They are utterly adorable and fairly make my heart sing, even when they’re breaking it. This is a Leo POV response up to and including the 'The Frenemy Of My Enemy'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chaos And The Calm

_You're just different now and that's okay._

He tries to take his own advice. He really does. He's getting there. Slow road. Tries to come to terms with a reality he'd been rejecting; that there was no going back to where Jemma and he used to be, buttons and banter in place, comfortable and steady and just them. He's reminded of a thing from his childhood. Some Scottishy Irish proverb type thing. _It's a long road that has no turning._ He thinks he can at least see the turn now, even if he's got way to walk yet.

They're different now and that's okay.

Granted he isn't struggling to contain a latter found ability to not reduce everything around them to dust like Skye is, or whatever...thing it is Raina apparently has going on with herself these days, from what Jemma had told him. Made him wonder how he'd have dealt with a physical change, rather than the one he'd had. Although given how his own face made him grimace some mornings, might be an improvement there. He kind of liked those glasses though, if not the suit, which made him feel like..not himself. He liked his cardigans just fine, thanks, but he could maybe keep the glasses. If he looked better. Did he? Maybe not. And the fact that he didn't actually really need glasses. Even if they looked good. If they, in fact, did, of course. 

_Tangent, Fitz._

He can almost hear her voice saying it. Doesn't fear that voice in his head as he used to. He's found what's real. Yes, maybe their rhythm was a little different than it once was. That thing they did. Their thoughts and consequently choices, often veered off in seemingly random directions before joining together again to make a cohesive whole once more; something new that hadn't been there at the start of that thought. They were getting a little, just a little, of that back when they spoke now. So it wasn't quite the same as it was before, but it was something. And he needed it the most, that thing with her that he missed so, so much. The thing that maybe hurt the most when it was gone; the lost bond of Science. That meld of minds, like isotopes of a single element, so in tune were their thoughts. _Then._

Broken trust (still filing Ward under wanker because he still bloody was) and a bruised heart (fine it'd be fine soon wouldn't it he was fine) he could take. Now that he was finally seeing a way clearer of his own frustration; in not being able to do the work, to remember, just to think, so much effort, he could see that she'd been suffering too. Of course he saw it. Felt it. Having him spilling his mixed-up, messy feelings on her like that would have been enough of a change for them, never mind having to, you know casual little thing of saving his life, bringing him home, and then to be faced with him so changed when she did, and then, _then_ , going out on a mission of her own. Completely on her own. Within _Hydra._ Doing something she'd never done before.

For someone who couldn't lie their way out of a paper bag, to do that, with those people, who could have killed her at any second (and nope not touching that little suggestion with a bargepole because that was definitely one thing his brain remembered very well; that he couldn't cope with the thought, even the _idea_ of Jemma in danger) it was...incredible. _She_ was incredible. Maybe the irrational part of his heart that he told to be quiet now, was still a little mad at her leaving him, and he'd have been scared half to death at her going in had he known what was happening anyway wouldn't he? But she did it. At least he'd had the familiar around him. For him, scrambled brain aside (official biological term, Fitz, yes), and yes okay, changes at SHIELD, but at least he was with friends; things were different but assuredly familiar. For him, the loss of her at his side was the one big thing that had changed. For her, everything had.

Somewhere with all the loyalty going a round with betrayal that seemed to be the new modus operandi recently, they'd found their trust in one another again. They had to. Because it was like a damn tug of war around them, with their 'I'm SHIELD' vs 'No I'm SHIELD' spats, and mostly he wanted to say how about we all pick TEAM NOT BLOODY HYDRA, and be done with it. He was team wherever Coulson needed him to be, and if right now that was running through the streets of San Francisco in aforementioned suit and glasses, or having a knife held to his neck, well...field work. He still felt more protected than he imagined Jemma was right now, with who knew what around the next corner in that nest of vipers. At least he was with people he trusted. Mostly. Bloody Ward.

He hoped she'd been able to stall them enough for a while. God (or Thor, or whoever), he missed her already. He missed her more than he missed The Twelfth Doctor (Scottish!) being on tv. These past few months felt like they were comprised of so much of missing her, even when she was right there, that he was loathe not to just be there with her and just...be. Maybe they weren't quite FitzSimmons now, but somewhere in the middle of it all, Jemma and Leo were talking. Laughing a little. And working together. _Together._ He had missed that more than he had words for. The them thing. Even if this was mostly a her thing. He was just the messenger. Genius plan of hers. So he packed away his things when he had to go, a moment for a look at past them, and if they seem fathoms away from that day in Peru, so new to it all still, he's happy that they're still here. Different, but here. Perhaps he feels a little pang, a wry smile, for the days when not having his own monkey (no, tell me why, why can't I have a monkey, Jemma-solid reasons for the anti-monkey agenda, if you please) was the absolute worst of his problems. But he also knows how far he's come since then. They both have.

So when he left he didn't look back, even though he was reminded so sharply, of that time that she did look back at him, when she'd thought it was the last time, as had he. He could live without looking back because that was the point. He was alive. He was living. This was his life now. He was finally beginning to accept that. His life had changed, their relationship had changed, both of them as people had changed, in many ways. Maybe he'd gain most of his old capacity back, those processes that had once come so easily, almost _too_ easily; like he had been recently. Maybe he wouldn't. But it was going to be okay.

Life was precarious. Yes, technically, technically he could still die any minute out here. That was the field. The job. Try to help. Try not to die. But somehow, now, his first time back in it all since..everything, he felt a small kind of peace. Because no matter what happened next, he'd said something. He was never going to die not having told her how he felt. There was a kind of freedom in that. That was something.

Sometimes he wondered, worried even, if that was fair on her; the burden of his words, and then life at them, fast, before they had a chance to breath. But they were said. He wasn't sorry he'd found that truth with her. Maybe words were all they'd ever be, in that way, at least. Maybe. But when she'd taken his hand again in the lab, when she'd looked to him and they'd communicated again in that way they had, without the words, and when she'd trusted him, trusted that he was ready to carry out this plan, to do his job, to take on the world once more; brave in away she'd taught him, he'd felt safe again. _Safe_. For the first time in a very long time. For the first time since Ward had pushed them out into the open.

Yes, things were different now. And he could live with that, as long as they were facing these changes together. That said, one important thing hadn't changed at all. He smiled at the thought.

She still made the best prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella sandwich in the world. Just the way he liked it. 

With a just a hint of aioli. And a lot of Jemma Simmons.


End file.
